AI swarming borders

Currently the only thing you can do with the AI is tell it to get out of your territory. The AI will come right back in the next turn, and it will happily do it every single turn. Not every time, but eventually, the AI decided that even though I told it to get out of my territory it would go through my territory to the other side, and settle. This wouldn't have been too bad an occurrence I guess, I had the audacity to play the game and not baby sit the swarm of pioneers telling them to get out of my territory for a few turns so it managed to get past the half way point in my territory. The only problem is, earlier in that game when I was killing a monster and one of their pioneers settled near my army, instead of booting me back just outside of their territory it sent me over a dozen tiles away, just outside my own territory.

There really need to be some established rules to the "Get out of my territory" option. It would be nice if there was at least a ten turn interval where reentering the territory would automatically declare war so the AI would not just come back and come back and come back until you had a turn auto-end. To that end, it would also be nice if one of the things that prevented the autoturn was any member of a faction you had not explicitly allied with being in your territory. It also would make a bit of sense if it was harder to travel in unfriendly terrain, the fact that the enemies Pioneers are just as fast in my territory as my own pioneers who would presumably have access to maps and be more freely able to utilize my roads is more than a little silly. That feature was quite useful in Civilization for ages, and it would help me keep from having to literally put a line of soldiers in every single square along the borders of my territory.

And the most frustrating part of this situation was, when Krax got to the other side of my territory and established a couple of altars he had enough mana to send endless waves of skeleton armies into my territory. I got practically nothing for killing them, they did ridiculous amounts of damage, and they didn't count as him causing trouble in my land even though I knew it was him. This tactic is silly both for the AI and the player, if I start seeing pioneers protected by summoned skeleton armies wandering through my land, I am pretty sure I wouldn't need someone to draw me a picture to gather that those units were his. I was hoping the diplomatic options would be considerably improved, and so far it seems like they could use some serious work. I know I could have just declared war on Krax and in theory walked over his towns as soon as he sent his armies to my cities and I broke them. However, that is hardly the point. I was producing pioneers quite regularly, expanding my borders as quickly as I could without sacrificing city growth, and Krax still managed to produce far more pioneers and force them across my territory to start expanding on the other side, as I had a higher military rating than he did so he didn't start a war. These are significant flaws in the AI in my opinion.

The easiest fix would be to have unallied AI units kick up a nag message, and extend some amount of time during which it was impossible for the AI to enter my territory without declaring war, perhaps depending on game speed. As I was playing on the Epic game speed, it was all the more frustrating to have to micromanage his waves of pioneers. It also wouldn't hurt if the unit in question was actively sent back to their own territory, this would be a boon to players when they were caught exploring on the far side of an enemy and got boxed in by new expansion. I have been shunted back into a tiny corner repeatedly in earlier Elemental versions, although I will admit that the one time I was sent out of the enemy territory it put me right outside my own, so that may not be an issue any longer. If that is the case, it would simply require making those rules apply to the AI.

TL;DR: AI being told to exit territory should effect a ban on them reentering without declaring war for a number of turns dependent on game speed, the AI should be sent back toward its own territory rather than being allowed to finish crossing yours instantly.

I would think that things were safe to leave alone, but once I came back to a spot where I'd stopped a swarm of pioneers before, they'd literally be in the space right next to my territory, just waiting to flood in the moment I wasn't looking.

It'd be difficult to establish "you can only go two tiles away from another kingdom/empire's territory" rules, but I think that Beric01's idea of making it like Civ where you cannot enter another sovereign's territory without declaring war. With ANY unit. Especially those damn pioneers...

First of all, you don't get any sort of notification when the AI enters your territory, despite the fact that there's a notification area that could easily alert you to this fact.

Second of all, the AI should have the option to declare war if you refuse to allow passage. So sure, you can tell them to get out, but it could backfire into a hostile confrontation. They can be open about their intentions and say that they're going to attack someone else, in which case you can let them pass if you don't care. Or they can be secretive, if perhaps they're planning on founding a city somewhere and don't want to tell you in case you come looking for it, in which case they may have to just risk incurring your wrath.

Thirdly, I don't even know how to begin writing an AI that is secretive about its motives. I mean really. Montezuma in Civ 4 with his huge stack of doom. Oh yeah, real subtle buddy.

Imo, there should be an 'anti-treaty' that you can place on other factions. You lose some diplomacy ratings if you turn it on, but the effect basically would say "by entering my territory, you are declaring war on me", just to make sure they STAY OUT.

I also agree that this should be changed as it is currently an irritation.

I like the idea that no other faction can enter your territory unless you have a specific treaty: perhaps "open borders" as suggested above or "alliance". Merely being at peace should not allow this. Obviously when you are at war with someone you can each enter the others territory at will - at that point diplomicy does not enter into it.

I hate most that if you keep booting them you loose diplomatic relationship with them - and they may declare war they cant even posssibly win. While player gets constantly booted and what - do i loose relationship? no because im living being so i think differently, and there is no bar representing my attitude (obviously)

It makes me feel like my faction plays with different ruleset thats separated from game world.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who has encountered this issue. It is incredibly frustrating for an AI to just walk pioneer after pioneer into your territory, just waiting for you to get caught up doing something else. It seems like there are a variety of simple fixes, so I would love to see something done about that quickly.

I agree. Perhaps it is 'realistic' that in the FE world fledgling kingdoms/empires wouldn't be able to keep people from entering their territory (although in that case why can they boot them out by going to the diplomacy screen?) but from a gameplay point of view it would be many times better if it was like Civ and you couldn't enter enemy territory without declaring war.

I'm not going to make another thread for this one, since they both fall under a miserable failing in the diplomatic AI. The AI will declare war on you, then sue for peace, then declare war, then sue for peace, seemingly forever. I am unsure why this is happening, but an AI I share no borders with demanded tribute, then never sent any armies my way when he declared war on me for refusing. Then every few turns he asks us to be allies, then immediately declares war on me again. So this is another clear gap in the diplomatic AI. There really needs to be a period of at least 10 turns wherein the enemy who just declared peace will not declare war again. This I know is something that Civilization does. However, there's nothing wrong with learning from one of the better strategy game series. There is a reason for this, it prevents backstabbing from the player, and more importantly it won't allow for the AI to constantly declare war and peace within turns of each other for the entire game until you find and destroy them. I won't go into how idiotic it is that factions you have been peaceful with and on good terms with, have never seen and do not share a border with decide arbitrarily to declare war on you. I will however mention that while I was waging war and dealing with the peace war peace war peace war nonsense I forgot to pay attention to Krax and he once again snuck a pioneer past me. So, good show on me not being able to use roads in enemy territory, but the AI being able to use my roads to get across my territory in no time. The combination of having to hunt for units like fleas so I can tell Krax every single turn to get out of my territory, combined with the AI literally using the neutral monsters as their guardians to protect themselves from me, and then constant spam of War and Peace states has made me decide I will be much better off playing another game until these issues are addressed.

This needs to be worked into an espionage system. I think the interactions currently are pretty one dimensional. The AI interacts with you a few times demanding stuff then declares war.

I'd rather see the AI declare less pointless wars (as above poster mentions) unless they really mean it and do stuff like espionage to steal techs, poison populations, start fires whatever to slow progress of other factions.

This will add a lot of depth to the interaction between. Again, Gal Civ2 had a great Diplomacy which was rich and deep.

I completely agree about borders. Having the enemy be able to waltz through your territory is frustrating.

But the reason things are this way is to enable heroes to explore the world. If heroes cannot go through enemy borders, they cannot do quests or get items easily. Sometimes quest objectives even spawn inside other factions territory. Considering how fast AI factions expand their borders, this is a very really problem if closed borders are implemented.

I'd also like to add that instead of penalizing enemies for entering your territory, I'd like to see some early or midgame tech that lets your own units move faster inside your borders. It already takes a loooong time to move units during war. I'd rather not see that made worse.

Agreed, it is frustrating to experience such a mindless diplomacy exploits by the AI.

This game deserves a better diplomacy system and more "sane" AI, even if that will make it mean or/and backstabbing in some cases.

We need a challenging AI, using the diplomacy as a tool and constantly making you trying to figure out its next move, not just dumb pioneer trespasser abusing the most simple strategies all game.

And make war count please, not something spammable every other turn. Make it feel like war, with all the diplomacy weight and the economy and unrest burden it carries.

If the AI keeps being plain dumb and can't figure it's way to influence and harm me most without acting in dumb and annoying and repetitive ways until lose patience towards it, it is just a great game wasted.

And seriously add some faster transport - either be spell or some kind of neutral creep transporting you to certain points around the map when you have met certain requirements, so it's not exploitable early game..

I also agree that we need to have a more permanent "close borders" state - having to keep looking for enemy AI that has entered my borders and keep telling them to stay out every single turn is extremely frustrating...

Just kill em you weaklings. No wonder they had to remove the Umber sovereign. He would have eaten you mortal meat pies.

If you had taken five seconds to read, instead of jumping to erroneous conclusions, you'd see that I have no problem with the enemy factions. I have a problem with the "allied" factions, or neutral factions, not showing up on your map, not taking get out for an answer etc. I was currently ROFLstomping the two biggest factions in my current game, when my neighbor spied some territory I couldn't take myself because it is currently being guarded by a roving neutral Monster clump rated Deadly. While my own pioneers die if they attempt to head that direction, the AI doesn't fight monsters anymore so they are able to send dozens of pioneers one after another through my territory without declaring war. I tried declaring war and killing all the pioneers, I then had three factions all declaring peace and then one turn later declaring war again. This is a huge AI problem, as is the fact that it is so laughably easy to slaughter the biggest factions because they just churn out cannon fodder instead of trying to build any worthwhile forces. But go ahead and feel smug because you're clearly the best player ever, don't mind us, we're just pointing out bugs in a beta.

Am not sure how they could "fix" this to not backfire. If am doing some quests and they spawn in enemy territory, and they are not really warm towards my faction, I really don't like being forced to go to war (Especially if they are stronger than me) just to get to the quest point.

I guess it shouldn't bother you that much that they send pioneers left and right, if you wanted said spot you should have made a priority in settling it, either with a town or an outpost, you can't really tell them to not go to a neutral zone on map and settle just because they pass through your territory

This is by far the most frustrating thing about LH for me right now - at the very least:

1. we need to BE INFORMED IF ANY ARMY (neutral, hostile or otherwise) enters our territory, so we can decide what to do with it

2. we need to be able to PERMANENTLY tell an AI to stay out of our borders, and not have to do it every turn like an idiot

Other than MAJOR FRUSTRATION and micromanagement issues, this causes a SERIOUS imbalance with AI, since it can immediately sense if another army is in their territory while we need to visually check all our borders every single turn in order to get the same information.